Brown University Library News

The Library is pleased to announce the appointment of Gwendolyn Collaço as the Anne S.K. Brown Curator for Military and Society. In this role, Gwendolyn will grow and develop the renowned Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection. She will focus on expanding its use by the Brown community and to enhancing its prominence among scholars. 

Gwendolyn was most recently the Collections Curator in the Aga Khan Documentation Center, part of Distinctive Collections at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  In this role Gwendolyn selected rare books, manuscripts, and Islamic Art for Distinctive Collections and curated exhibitions for MIT gallery spaces.  Gwendolyn crafted the collections development policy for Islamic rare books and art. She further launched the creation of the Boston Islamic Art Collectors’ Forum. Among her collaborative projects, she spearheaded an initiative with MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Vitrocentre in Switzerland to chemically analyze MIT’s stained-glass windows from 19th c. Egypt during their conservation. Next spring, the related exhibit Refracted Histories through Stained Glass will open at MIT.  

Previously, Gwendolyn was Assistant Curator for Art of the Middle East at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where she contributed to the new permanent collection galleries. Earlier, she served as Middle Eastern Studies Librarian at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, and Visual Resources Librarian for Islamic Art and Architecture at the Harvard Fine Arts Library. Over her career thus far, she has created numerous exhibits with special collections, including Returning Splendor to Ruins: Recovering the Alhambra in the 19th c. though Plaster Casts & Prints, at the Fisher Fine Arts Library of the University of Pennsylvania. 

Gwendolyn holds a joint Ph.D. in the History of Art & Architecture and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. She received her M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago as well as a B.A. in Classics and Medieval & Renaissance Studies from Vassar College. She specializes in early modern Islamicate manuscripts and print culture with an emphasis on the circulation of works on paper via the art market in Istanbul. Her research has been supported by the American Research Institute in Turkey and the German Orient Institut – Istanbul, among others. Her published work appears in journals, such as Ars Orientalis, Muqarnas, and several edited volumes.